What’s Fact or Fiction in Nolly Episode 2?
Did Noele Gordon break new ground by interviewing a British Prime Minister? Was she a diva or a do-gooder? And did her pal, actor Tony Adams, actually sail a boat out to her final Crossroads scene? What elements thus far in the miniseries Nolly are fact, fiction, or something in between? [Contains spoilers.]
- 1.
Gordon was First Woman to Interview a Prime Minister
Gordon with PM Harold Macmillan (left) courtesy of The Noele Gordon Archive and (right) on the Crossroads set with PM Harold Wilson. FACT! As a reporter for ATV News in 1958, Noele Gordon became the first woman to interview a Prime Minister on British television. She sat down with Harold Macmillan, who’d taken office the year before. An extended version of their conversation then aired on Gordon’s daytime chat show, Lunchbox. Gordon also came to know Macmillan’s successor Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his wife Mary, who was “one of Noele’s biggest fans,” according to the Daily Mail (UK). Harold Wilson visited the set of Crossroads and Mary Wilson wrote the forward to Gordon’s memoir.
- 2.
Nolly was Known for Acts of Kindness
Courtesy of The Noele Gordon Archive. FACT! In preparing to write his script, Nolly creator Russell T Davies talked to surviving Crossroads cast; colleagues who called Gordon ‘Godmother’ on set. “I thought they were just being polite,” he tells iNews (UK). “But they really did adore her. She wasn’t the monster people thought she was.
“One floor manager’s parents died in a car crash. On [the woman’s] wedding day she had no one to take her to the church, so Nolly drove her in her Rolls-Royce. It’s in the script and it’s absolutely true. … I thought writing about a diva would be fun, but that’s not who I heard about.”
- 3.
Tony Adams Got in a Boat to Support His Colleague
FACT! It’s true that Crossroads sent Gordon’s character on a cruise around the world in her final scene after being sacked—and, rather remarkably, it’s also a fact that Nolly’s fellow actor Tony Adams took to the water in his private boat to support her.
Noele Gordon and Tony Adams were dear friends, despite their 21-year age difference. And they really did live across from each other in Birmingham! Adams tells the Daily Mail (UK) that they saw each other daily and shared a running joke in which he addressed her as ‘Miss Gordon,’ while she called him ‘Adams,’ pretending he was her butler.
